


Sweet Reassurance

by sexylibrarian1



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-19
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-18 12:58:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9386315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sexylibrarian1/pseuds/sexylibrarian1
Summary: You get fired from your job. So of course, you have to go into your favorite Romanian cafe to console yourself. While inside, you receive some reassurance from an unlikely source.One-shot





	

The sun was sinking, almost arrogantly, to meet the waiting horizon, and you hurried along, trying to make it to your favorite café in the Romanian suburb where you lived. It was a terrible day at work, and quite shockingly, your last. Two years ago, you came over to Romania—Romania, of all places—on a scholarship, and completed a Master’s degree in order to take a job as a translator once you got out of school. On the night you graduated, you were offered the job of your dreams, and you took it without hesitation, skipping the parties just to rush to your apartment and tell everyone at home that you had succeeded. And instead of hitting the parties after the well-earned bragging session, you headed to the café, your favorite, to settle down after an eventful ceremony and read a book that you actually wanted to read.  
All of it had just gone to shit about two hours ago. The company you worked for had let you go with no preamble, citing money problems and staff issues as their reasoning. You didn’t care. You were devastated. Somewhere, in between the time it took you to get home, drop your box of crap off at your little apartment, and walk to the café that had been your refuge, all through school and all through the time you had worked.  
What in hell were your parents going to say?  
Firmly shutting down that thought, you barreled into the café, and the bell over the doorway jangled jarringly.   
“(Your name)!”   
Your favorite barista was working tonight, and as you sat down at your favorite table, closest to the glass case housing the cakes and pies, she noticed right away that something was wrong. “(Your name), what’s wrong?”  
“I… I was… they let me go—they—I don’t have a—shit!” you spat, the curse word coming out in harsh English; the normally impeccable Romanian was disappearing (rather rudely, you thought) under your current stress.   
“Is it your job?”  
“Da,” you said gratefully, “they fired me.” There it was, there was the word, and you were so overcome that you burst into tears. Your favorite barista promptly stroked your back as you cried unabashedly, your head down on the table, cradled by your arms. “…I don’t know what I’m going to do,” you finally said after you got a hold of yourself. “I’m sorry, I just…”  
She nodded, smiling, and went to the glass case. “Your usual?”  
“Um…” you started, eyeing the sweets while still dabbing tear tracks away with the sleeve of your shirt, “actually, I think I’m going to go all out and get that baklava. I’m going to go broke soon.”  
“Don’t say that!” she contradicted you. “You will find another job. Besides, companies love it when their competition fucks up and they get the good ones who left because of it.”  
You giggled, you couldn’t help it. She brought a large piece of baklava over, on a cute porcelain plate, along with a mug of hot tea. “It’s taken care of.”  
“Oh my God, you didn’t have to do that just because I cried-”  
“I didn’t,” she said with a smirk. “He beat me to it.”  
You blinked and looked behind you. Sitting in the corner was a bulky guy with his back to the wall and a worn ball cap over his face. He had a mug of tea and a pastry in front of him—one of the plum ones, you saw—and he had a book and a newspaper, both open on the table. He shot you a glance and then went back to the book.  
You felt as though he was still looking at you.  
The barista grinned, and before you could give it a second’s thought, you picked up your tea and baklava and moved to sit across from him. His head came up immediately, looking first at you, then at the immediate area around you. He closed the book and pushed the newspaper aside without even looking at them. You blushed; he looked as though you’d affronted him by sitting at his table.  
“I’m sorry,” you blurted out, not entirely sure what you were apologizing for, “I just wanted to… thank you. For-” You pointed to the baklava.  
Once again, your Romanian had run headfirst out the door. And this time, it was because he was… surprisingly good-looking. Once you got past the fact that he was wearing dirty clothes that he might not have taken off in a week, and that he was scruffy enough that his clearly sharp jawline was hidden by his beard, you could see that he was tall, in proportion, barrel-chested, and had the most unique eyes you had ever seen on a man. They were gray, and somehow… deeply disturbing.  
He nodded once. Slightly embarrassed by the charged silence, you moved to get up, but he laid his right hand over your wrist and stopped you, his eyes going to the window and back to you, an infinitesimal movement that you wouldn’t have noticed had you not inherently understood that this man… operated differently. Case in point, he was seated in such a way that he could see out the window, but no one could look inside and see him.   
“Uh…” You sat back down, a blush trickling from your neck up to your jaw and cheeks. “I’m (your name).”  
“Steve,” he returned, and took his hand off your wrist. The patch of your skin that he had touched burned.   
“I’m not bothering you, am I?”  
“No.”  
“Okay.” Now your blush was furious, and you thought to yourself that it’s a combination of the fact that this man is incredibly hot, and that he is incredibly socially awkward. “Do you want me to move?”  
“No.”  
You blinked, and then looked down at your abandoned baklava, which you hadn’t touched, and looked back up at him. “Do you want some? It’s too big; I’m never going to be able to eat it all.”  
“No.” It took him a second, but then he thought to soften it. “You looked like you needed it.”  
Your breath huffed out, and you rolled your eyes. “I got fired today,” you told him. “If decent alcohol wasn’t so expensive, I would have gotten that.”  
His lips twitched upward. “I know how that feels.”  
“I worked my ass off!” you exclaimed, suddenly feeling as though you were riding on an electric current, and that there was no stopping it. “I learned the language, I came here for school, I got my degree, and it was accelerated, mind you—and then I spent a year and a half at that stupid company and I barely get a severance for it! I have no idea what I’m going to do now—I can’t go home; my parents will just say ‘I told you so’ and I don’t want to live with them, no thank you, that stage is over, thank you very fucking much, but now I have nowhere to go and nothing to do and I gave so much to this stupid country and it’s given absolutely bloody nothing back!”  
There was a flash of something in his eyes, something like the anger that is pouring out of you, but deeper, as if he had given more than just his time and his intellect, and instead of simply receiving nothing for it, had had something taken away from him against his will in return. You found yourself enamored by that glimpse of utter emotion, the only indication of what might be going on behind the scruffy ball cap and the paranoid behavior.   
“I’m sorry,” you said softly, feeling a high level of guilt, for some odd reason, that was probably inappropriate to the situation  
“Don’t be,” he answered automatically, and put his hand on top of your wrist again. For a fleeting moment, you thought to yourself that this was all you’d ever need in life, just his graceful hand on top of yours, reassuring you even though he most likely needed the reassuring himself. “Don’t invalidate the way you feel. No one should ever do that to you. Least of all you.”  
“…You do talk,” you blurted after a second, and broke into an involuntary, sheepish grin.   
He did, too. “Good luck,” he told you, and downed his tea in one gulp, pouring the tea down his throat without ever touching the glass to his mouth. “…Things get better.”  
He stood and swept his gaze around the room, ending it with a kind smile at you, picked up his book and newspaper, and disappeared out the door. Checking out the window at his retreating form, you saw him pull off his right glove—the hand that had gripped the mug—and throw it casually in the trash can.   
“…Who is he?” you asked the barista after you moved back up to your table.  
“I’ve never seen him,” she answered, looking in the direction he had gone as if she expected him to come back in and wreak havoc. “He acts like he’s never been in a café before.”

**Author's Note:**

> He hasn't been in a cafe before. He was too scared of poisoned food or of getting captured. :(


End file.
